Blair Campbell’s wife Tina Liu Campbell said at the time of his death that he was “the best husband and daddy we could’ve ever asked for”.
Photo: Supplied / NZME
Taranaki couple Debbie and Carlyle “Buzz” Campbell’s phone rang in the middle of the night in October 2022.
It was their son Blair’s wife Tina calling from the UK – but she could barely talk because Blair had died.
“It was unbelievable” to get the call all parents dread Buzz said. “It felt like your heart was being ripped out.”
His 35-year-old landscaper son had been electrocuted while pruning a garden hedge, just south of Manchester in the UK.
He had sliced into a wire running from an electrical substation.
Airlifted to hospital, he died shortly after, leaving behind a young daughter and son.
For his parents, the two years since had been doubly tough: because of the gut-punching pain they’ve felt at Blair’s loss, and also the senselessness of his death – how preventable it was.
The Campbells haven’t been interviewed until now.
They had been waiting for the inquest in the UK, which Buzz attended over three days in October.
The inquest found Blair had been unaware of the danger he was in, vindicating what Buzz knew about his son’s attention to detail and safety practices dating back to his time in the New Zealand army.
Buzz said Blair started his landscape business Blue Kiwi Gardens and Maintenance in Mobberley shortly after the Covid pandemic hit.
It quickly thrived, with Blair employing five people.
On the day he died, Blair had been called to trim a 3m hedge in a private garden, which bordered a public lane where there was a pole-mounted substation maintained by SP Energy Networks.
The inquest jury heard thick ivy had covered warning signs on the power pole.
They also heard how multiple reports had been made to the company that the ivy was dangerous and needed to be removed but that these weren’t acted on, Buzz said.
According to Buzz, it was “the private owners (who) got sick of this hedge and they’re the ones who ordered the job in the end”, asking Blair to cut their garden side of it.
SP Energy Networks had since made changes to it’s health and safety policy.
Both the power company and the private homeowners were represented at the inquest by some of the UK’s best lawyers, Buzz said.
He said he was thankful for the inquest and to the jury and judge, but remained unhappy at how his son died.
Blair’s wife Tina spoke after the inquest and said she lost her soulmate.
“To this day, I still wake up hoping that it’s all been a terrible nightmare,” she said.
Blair was hugely outgoing and energetic, Buzz said, and the UK church was filled with rugby and cricketing mates at his funeral, with standing-room only.
Former English cricket captain Michael Vaughan was among those who paid tribute to him as a “great character”.
His death led to an outpouring on social media with the Wilmslow Rugby Football Union commemorating him with a minute of silence.
The Alderley Edge Cricket Club also hailed him as “one of our most popular members”.
“[He] had a great sense of humour and appetite for life. We’re going to miss you Blair.”
Blair was the older of Buzz and Debbie’s two children.
He spent time in the NZ Army, and it was while on a trip home to New Plymouth to visit his parents in the year 2000 that he met Tina.
She was on exchange as a dentist and did a check-up on his teeth.
Within hours of the dentist appointment, the couple met again at a local park and around a year later Blair followed Tina to the UK as a 23-year-old.
He initially worked as a real estate agent before starting his landscape business, which took off so fast he and Tina had been planning to buy a million-pound home just before his death, Buzz said.
Flying out to the UK shortly after Blair’s death, Debbie and Buzz were surrounded by friends at the airport doing a waiata.
Back home in New Plymouth where Buzz was a builder and Debbie had been an emergency department nurse for 40 years, the loss was also felt keenly.
“It should never have happened,” Buzz said.
– This story was first published by the New Zealand Herald.
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